CAMEL

As others have mentioned the remastered and expanded version of this original live recording is a keeper.This was re-issued in 2002 just after Peter Bardens death and so it is dedicated to his memory and musical legacy.It's kind of cool that Peter introduces and thanks the London Symphony Orchestra at the start of disc two which is the complete "Snowgoose" album done live in 1975.And i have to agree with others who feel this turned out better than the studio version.The first disc is mostly from the "Raindances" tour and so features songs from that record along with many other earlier tracks.A good companion to this live album is the "Coming Of Age" double live album which only has four tracks(from "Snowgoose") on it that are featured on "A Live Record".So those two live albums cover a lot of CAMEL material. This particular live recording also has Mel Collins and Richard Sinclair on the first disc adding their immense talents.There are so many highlights on this recording i don't know where to start.In particular "First Light" which is so uplifting at times and "A Song Within A Song" which is simply gorgeous.Check out "Lunar Sea" and "Lady Fantasy" both incredibly done.My favourite as usual is "Never Let Go".So emotional for me and the sax is a nice touch.The bass,guitar and organ also get a chance to shine here. I must admit i've never warmed up to the "Snowgoose" studio album but this live version is an upgrade and one i really enjoy. Easily 4 stars for CAMEL's first live album which is finally given the treatment it deserves with this remastered and expanded edition.

I am an unlucky person, I must say.

I had the misfortune of being born in 1995, when a lot of great prog records like The Snow Goose had been long forgotten. I do enjoy the current wave of prog, with Dream Theater, Porcupine Tree, Frost* and what not, but there is something to the early days that modern prog musicians just don't seem to come up with.

The very first Camel record I owned was A Live Record, which itself contains a full performance of The Snow Goose. I was very young (four), and disregarded the second disc, which was full of birdy fun. Instead, I listened to tunes from Mirage, Rain Dances and Moonmadness. I did develop a fondness for Rhayader, but I failed to ingest the whole album, ignoring that it was a continuous piece, á la Brave or Six Degrees.

Recently, Camel records suffered utter depricing, due to their poor sales in the progless country I live in. Thus, my father decided to reestablish his Camel collection, which he already completed in LP format. He started with Mirage, Camel, Moonmadness and refused to buy The Snow Goose, arguing that we already had it, with our A Live Record copy.

So I decided to protest, arguing that studio albums are perhaps more important than live albums, and that it was being offered at a very good price. He decided to give in.

Now that that happened, I cannot set iTunes to play anything else than The Snow Goose.

It's hard to believe that it doesn't get 5 stars here.

A lot of reviewers argue that it doesn't live up to the hype surrounding it.

I respect their opinions. I've read a lot of reviews.

But The Snow Goose is beyond anything any of us can say. It is solely Latimer's and it is for us to really understand and digest. It is simply perfect. Tracks like Preparation and The Flight Of the Snow Goose give us that technicality that while not completely overwhelmin nor excessively evident, show how progressive rock goes beyond odd time signatures, modulations, polyrhythms, syncopations and accents that confuse the metronome.

And then, we have songs like Rhayader and its followup, which show us how progressive rock incorporates mundane simplicity and manages to create a world of its own. If you've read The Snow Goose and listen to the record, you'll see that Latimer and his buddies need no lyrics to recreate Gallico's world.

Finally, epic tracks like La Princesse Perdue give us the sense that while not excessively epic, an album with songs that do not surpass six minutes in length is probably in a league of its own in the genre.

To understand and appreciate prog, you need a lot of records. The Snow Goose is definitely one of them. Hands down

Quite an erratic affair, which reminds me of Duke by GENESIS, another album with 50 percent masterpieces and the rest pop tunes of varying quality.

Maybe a third of this album stands up to their earlier albums (including Rain Dances which I am one of the few who rate as high as their first three Decca albums)

"Echoes", the title track and "Summer Lightning" are the best. The rest is decent enough with the exception of "Down on the Farm". Not only is it bad and silly, with a quite nice intro it's also a big disappointment.

This quite rightly deserves three solid stars.

Camel - A Live Record (1978)

The Camel Live album. This really is a threat to fans of the band. On this two-part live album we get one lp with early Camel tracks and one lp with a live version of the Snow Goose, partly with an orchestra. The recording quality is supurb, the sound changes my room into a theater.

Camel plays professional symphonic prog with an emphasis on the instrumental part, though the vocals can get quite intimate. Their melodic, harmonic approach is likable and the technical musicanship is only used in order to make the music even better. The emotional guitars of Latimer are as good as those of Pink Floyd's Gilmour.

Back to this live compilation. The band itself plays very accurate, but as some have already mentioned, it isn't 'on fire'. The Snow Goose is played perfectly in my opinion, but the first halve of this live compilation lacks some energy. I think a lot us would have loved to see the band play a track like Lady Fantasy on the heavy Mirage way. Never let go suffers from a bad solo-section, but the other tracks on the first lp are actually just fine. A professional sounding band playing good compositions, and of course, Lunar Sea sounds amazing. The synths and guitars are great, but the addtional wind section by Collins doesn't fit in the magical environment of this instrumental epic.

The second lp, the Snow Goose live, is the main attraction here. I actually prefer the live version over the already amazing studio recording. The addtion of an orchestra on some tracks works pretty well, accept for Dunkirk in which the orchestra is very unnecesary. But then again, the string sections work very well with the music most of the time. The sound of the bombastic tracks is truly immense!

Conclusion. If you like this band, this is a recommended live album. It might not be perfect and the first halve could have been a bit more energetic, but it's still one of the best progressive live albums from the classic period. The Snow Goose live is a real five star recording and I would give the rest three stars. This makes up for four stars! Fans of modern prog might be better of with the Coming of Age live album, which as a more up to date symphonic sound.

Camel - Curriculum Vitae (2003)

It's nice to have seen a doc about the history of this amazing band. It's interesting to get an inside view by (ex-)members telling their stories. The movie tells the story from the beginning of the band untill the beginning of the 21th century. The footage presented is nice, but there are no complete songs. The production of the doc is good and the questions of the interviewers are interesting.

But what do you do with your dvd if you've seen this doc once, perhaps twice if you really want to suck up the information? This document would have been more important if all complete songs from the footage used was presented as an extra. The track-listing would have been quite interesting and the historical value big. But sadly this is only a doc with short parts of songs.

Conclusion. This is for fans of the band. An interesting film, but it has no replay-value. Two stars, a good document for fans. It did gave me a good feeling afterwards, knowing these records you have in your collection all have a history of lot's of people involved with own stories. Music is so much more then only sound... it's an enterprise.

Recently I had the opportunity to discuss about Stationary Traveller in more than one PA forum, and I've also seen that some of the people I've discussed with has written a review of this album so it's time for me to write my review.

First of all this is an excellent album under all the possible points of view. It's in my personal top 50 list and I really loved it at the first spin.

This could be considered the first Andy Latimer's solo work, as also Andy Ward had to resign during the recording of the previous "Single Factor". The lineup sees Ton Scherpenzeel (Kayak) at keyboards, Chris Rainbow (Alan Parsons Project) at the vocals other than the usual Mel Collins at sax.

This is the third Camel's concept album after "The snow goose" (quite unusual for an instrumental album being considered a concept) and Nude. It's about the Berlin Wall and it's the story of a person who decides to leave everything he has on the East to try to escape to the West, as many people did in the real world, some losing their lives since when the "door was closed" until the fall of the wall.

"Pressure point" is an introductive instrumental written for Andy's guitar. The live version on the omonimous live album is longer and features a long section of fretless bass. Nothing special.

with "Refugee" we are already in the masterpiece. The bad is that with this album Andy tried to renew the Camel's sound and make it more conformant with the standards ot the early 80s, so electronic drums and fairlight are almost everywhere in the album. The good is that this change in the sound is counter-balanced by Andy's musical skill, so at the end this is not disturbing. The guitar on the solo sounds a bit "Dire Straits", but it's well inserted in the song's structure and it's exactly how it has to sound here.

"Vopos" opens with about one minute of Fairlight and starts effectively when the electronic drum gave the rhythm. the lyrics are highly dramatic: the Vopos are around "As if a dream has come to life". One of the best songs of the album.

"Cloak And the Dagger Man" is another electronic song. I have the impression that the sequence of the songs on the album is the same on which they have been written.This songs clsoes a sort of trilogy with the previous two so now the story plot is clear.

Now we are at the last track of the first sife of the vinyl. the title track is an instrumental on which Andy's guitar can freely express. I remember the first listening made me think to Hotel California, but it hasn't anything to do with that song apart some similarities in the main sequence of chords. The guitar solo is probably one of the best ever played by Andy.

The B side of the vinyl starts with "West Berlin" I don't know if a single has been released from this album, but if one, this song would have been perfect for the A sdie. I think it can represent the whole album.

"Fingertips" is a love song, probably the most commercial, but is a great love song which features a fantastic sax solo over a fretless bass. The same year George Michael had a big success with Careless Whisper. I don't want to compare the two songs but the two sax solos have similar purposes. I think the singer is Andy himself, as the live version sung by Chris Rainbow is not as good as the studio one.

"Missing" and "After Words" are two instrumentals, still based on electronic drumming, Fairlight and the great Andy's guitar. They lead into the closure of the story.

"Long goodbyes" is what its title says: "Long goodbyes make me so sad, forgive my leaving now...." Another love song with a nice guitar solo at the end.

This album doesn't feature epic tracks: the longest is less than 6 minutes, but is not just a collection of songs. It's deeply into the 80s, also because of the concept. The fall of the wall closed that decade and after this album began the lawsuite which temporarily stopped Camel's activity. Without the attempt to sound mainstream it would have been an absolute masterpiece, now it sounds a bit dated.

4.5 stars

Great and powerful debut album and probably one of the best debuts I know. Very enjoyable tunes with beautiful keys and well done guitar and bass arrangements. There are 7 songs here and the albums starts with "Slow yourself down". Inspired keyboard arrangements with a consistent rhythm sustained by Doug Ferguson on bass and Andy Ward on drums. Definitely an highlight. "Mystic queen" is the second one which start slowly with a nice acoustic guitar filled with a melodic bass line and continues in the same slow manner sustained by a mystic and flickering voice. It is hard to decide for an highlight on this one because all these songs have somehow the same level. Anyway a plus for "Mystic Queen" which is a song easy remembered. This is a strong characteristic of a good album for me.

"Six ate", the third song start with in fast tempos and has the same unique Camel flavor.

"Separation" is the fourth song and the shortest one with the same fast tempos as "Six ate". In the middle of the song some slow parts and the end of the song is very powerful and probably one of the most enjoyable part. All instruments are joined in a free jam session style sound.

"Never let go" is a very optimistic song in terms of lyrics and the melodic line is indicating the same thing. The song start to come to an end in a slow manner and finally ends with the same style as the aforementioned song.

Curiosity sounds a bit inconsistent and uninspired here and there(more in the first part) and somehow it doesn't attract me in the same way as the other songs did. Nevetheless it is for sure not a bad song.The last song is instrumental ("Arubaluba") and it is a good song to end the album, very heavy and intense especially in terms of keyboard but as overall sound also.

What I enjoy most from Camel is that they were able to create an unique and specific sound from the right beginning even if they have discrete influences from Canterbury scene bands or Pink Floyd. This one deserves 4 solid stars easily and is recommended beyond Camel fans to a broader prog crowd audience. I don't know why Camel weren't not able to step in the first line of progressive rock scene. One possible answer is that their music was not groundbreaking and haven't pushed any limits. It is simple with a characteristic "camelesque" sound, melodic and very well played. Melodically Camel is for me one of the best bands I know and for this I came to appreciate them a lot. With this album they started the musical journey in a very good and elegant manner.

Quite a shake up after 'Breathless': Pete Bardens, co-founder and wonderful key-tickler, buggers off, as does Canterbury co-conspirator Richard Sinclair, taking with him both his tight bass-work and charmingly colloquial voice. So, after the satisfyingly group-oriented 'Breathless', Andy Latimer is left with quite a task. Punk blah blah blah forced to adapt blah blah blah commercial angle blah blah blah Genesis? yeah, well you know the story.

Now, I adore 'Breathless', I think it has an unpretentious musicality and lack of pomp (not to mention great playing and cool hooks) that marks it out as something very special, so following it under such circumstances was going to be doubly difficult. We still have Latimer, supremely articulate guitarist with his camomile and a hug voice, and the possibility of him slipping out his epic flute and doing it gentle and slow? ahem. Excuse me. Anyway, as I was saying, he was a capable one-man band and very much the 'heart' of Camel. So? the results could still be pretty cool and unavoidably "Camel".

Well, he was first and foremost a guitarist, so perhaps its apt that 'Wait' is more drivingly chord-led than a lot of the group's previous material. Now, the band had previously tried to "rock out" on 'Another Night' (from Moonmadness) and, in my humble opinion, largely failed. It helps here that the song is both shorter and more melodic than that previous attempt. It's actually pretty cool in a lite-rock single kind of way: really catchy, with some super block harmonies and gutsy backing vocals that sound a bit like Supertramp. It does sound rather? skeletal without Bardens' cloud of keyboard augmentations, but there is at least a pretty energetic keyboard solo in the middle.

Now, here is the great divider, where for those not already put off by the Sinclair-era material, the band "sold their soul" or something. 'Your Love Is Stranger Than Mine' is a decent, catchy synth-led single that, while not really any more "poppy" than the 'Breathless' stuff, is certainly a bit more? well, plodding. Still, Latimer shows unusually good pop chops, and it IS a well-constructed song. I enjoy it anyway!

Then, an instrumental, and a really pretty one. 'Eye of the Storm' really grew on me from between the more blatantly infectious material and is a particularly good example of the kind of atmospheric, lullingly (?) melodic instrumental 'Camel' were great at.

Then we have 'Who We Are'. It is here that a new aesthetic, that takes up much of the album, is established- a kind of austere majesty, augmented not by keys, but by stark chamber strings. It has a large, poppy chorus (some might say "sugary"), but Latimer has the uncanny knack of making a potentially overblown "lighter-waving" moment into something that sounds more akin to a bittersweet personal epiphany ('It won't matter at all? who weee aaare': I can't help but share his enthusiasm for whatever unknown romantic path he's treading). It's a very good track, if not quite on the same level as the more energetic "biggies" from 'Breathless'. Perhaps I'm looking at it the wrong way round though ? as it could perhaps be viewed as one of the more concise, 'hooky' tunes from that album, gently spread on to a larger canvas. Well, its good anyway.

Another, very brief, instrumental is tremendously beautiful for a minute and then leaves. Hey, this is going well!

'Hymn to Her' is another rich yet characteristically subtle "epic" track that has grown on me considerably. Rather less catchy than 'Who We Are', and yet slightly more intriguing. Atmospheric, and graced with Latimer's characteristic genteel gravitas. Another good 'un!

Then everything goes weird.

'Neon Magic' is just a misfire, really. Latimer tries to do a Thin Lizzy impression for some reason. Not offensive, exactly, just pretty weak.

'Remote Romance' would be fine as a parody of the 'electro-pop' movement, if it weren't for the fact that said genre? didn't really exist yet. How unutterably bizarre. Like the "song" itself. I'd call it filler, because it is transparently pointless, if it weren't so weirdly prescient and er? yeah, weird. It is pretty crap though.

Okay, now back to the point, with 'Ice'. Twelve minutes of atmosphere, gently percussive chord-changes and Latimer illustrating his enviable taming of the guitar. To be honest, that's about it, but it is an impressive, atmospheric track nonetheless. It certainly makes the previous two duds seem very insignificant on the album as a whole. Clever sequencing there!

This album really isn't the popular concession that everyone makes it out to be ? in fact, a lot of the album seems to be a more stately, concise reaffirmation of the group's identity. There just happens to be some bizarrely throwaway moments that attract an inordinate amount of attention by being louder and less subtle than the rest of the record. Which is a shame, because nearly 2/3rds of the record is actually prime Camel. Well, if you like the band and aren't too put off by more concise songs with catchier bits in them, I'd certainly give this a try.

It is pretty evident that Camel was not the band We used to love in the seventies. This is their first recording, and a pretty amazing debut, but they had not decided yet where to go musically speaking. They are all there, including the magnificent Ward, but there´s a lot of styles colliding on It. A little progressive, a little psychedelia, a little plain rock, so maybe that's why this is one of my favorite recordings from them. That indecision worked wonders for me. So if You must start somewhere listening to this band why not start at the beginning? Try get this one.

I decided to review this album and give it a low rating because I think that CAMEL are best served if their weakest albums are NOT used by newbies as first approach to their music.

This is a good album for hard fans who can appreciate the jazzy period with Richard Sinclair during which Camel were sounding exactly as Caravan. Personally I don't like this period even if each single track alone is not bad.

Let's start from the good: as many other reviewer mention, "Echoes","summer lightning" and "You make me Smile" are good songs, Echoes is also mentioned in a forum thread as one of the best Camel's song at all. What is disppointing for me is that with Rain Dances and Breathless they have lost the intensity of the first 4 albums. There's more brain than heart here.

I imagine a person who has never heard anything of Camel choose an album from Rain Dances to The Single Factor (with the exception of Nude). He will never become a fan.

So even if Camel and Caravan's fans can like it so much, if you are not into Camel, please start from their first or their last albums. "Mirage" and "Rajaz" are my suggestions.

2 stars